


A Song For A Fallen Soldier

by orphan_account



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019), Ghosts (TV 2019) RPF
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Memories, Nostalgia, Oh my poor captain i am so sorry, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Regret, Sad, Self-Pity, The poor captain is a bit sad, only a little bit though, tired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 04:54:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26347453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A song for a fallen soldier... Why was he so lost? Why was it HIM who had to be stuck in this godforsaken house? What was wrong with him...I can't do summaries (or writing in general), but do have a read!
Kudos: 18





	A Song For A Fallen Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much fot choosing to read this! Do leave kudos and a comment if you enjoyed, it would make my day :)

Everybody dies. That’s the one constant in life; the only thing anyone can be sure of. Of course people die. They have to. The Ghosts knew this very well, but none of them better than the Captain. He’d seen enough death to last a lifetime. Too many young men with futures ahead of them, brutally murdered with hot lead, never able to go home, never able to say goodbye, lost souls in a sea of sorrow and frozen tears. Most of them had passed on, to… wherever they passed on to. Why not him though? Why did he, the Captain, have to remain forever stuck in the insufferable house, a house of nothing but purgatory and broken memories? It just wasn’t bloody fair.

Golden light flickered across the lake, catching dragonflies darting above the water in a beam of setting sun. It cast long shadows across the grounds of Button House, with one exception. His. He was a ghost, of course he had no shadow, he had nothing anymore, he barely even had his memories. What was he? Just a shell, that’s all. Perhaps there was some self pity in that shell, but he was certain he wasn’t him anymore. Despite being dead for what was over eighty years now, he’d still not come to terms with it. There had been no attempt to be who he really was, hiding himself with a facade. He continued to play the army captain after death, stoic, cold, a leading man, not privy to outbursts of emotion. Not even his name. They didn’t know anything about him. Even he didn’t know anything about him anymore, it had been hidden so completely. What if he truly was a soul lost to wander the grounds of Button House for eternity? Dear lord, his stomach turned at the thought.

His focus returned to that of the lake, and the setting sun, one of the few comforts he had found. It was bewitching, and reminded him of home, and a time before war, a time he was free. Bugger, there it was again, the self pity. It was fair, he thought, considering how many men had died under his command… A noise high above him, higher than the swallows that flitted across the water, catching the last insects before the light of day died, higher than the swifts that wheeled and screamed, ever circling, yes, there it was, that familiar sound. The song of a skylark. All soldiers recognised that, of course they did! One of the only sounds they had got comfort from in the trenches. All it seemed was heavy artillery, bombing, shooting, constantly. That was all it was, really. Men murdering each other because their governments couldn’t be civil. It wasn’t much use being civil with a lunatic like the fuhrer, though.

Once again, the calling bird brought his gaze up towards the sky. What was that poem… the lark trapped in a cage, as his spirit is at the house… There was a poem, he was sure… Something his mother once spoke to him, when he was just a boy.

_‘As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage,_   
_Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells —_   
_That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;_   
_This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age._   
_Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage_   
_Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,_   
_Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells_   
_Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage._

_Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest —_   
_Why, hear him, hear him babble & drop down to his nest,_   
_But his own nest, wild nest, no prison._

_Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,_   
_But uncumberèd: meadow-down is not distressed_   
_For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.’_

Ah. That was it. Gerard Manley Hopkins. The Captain could barely make out the shape of the little bird against the quickly darkening sky, a sort of mixture of wonderful colours. Marmalade orange blended in with crimson, mixing with aubergine purples, like a painters brush being pulled through the sky. Little splotches of blue in the distance, and clouds rolled and billowed. If only he could have felt the breeze on his skin one last time, one more day of being human, that’s all he wanted. One more day… please… anything for one more day… Ridiculous, of course, although the tightening of his chest and the lump in his throat still wouldn’t leave. The lark is a free bird, it sings and sings, flying up towards the heavens. Free, unlike him, his soul trapped eternally, damned to walk upon the earth until finally that’s gone too. But that little bird… oh it sings the sweetest of songs. A song for a fallen soldier.


End file.
